


Drunk Off One Sip

by jellyryans (ryankellycc)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (mutual?) pining, Aged-Up Character(s), Gen, Karasuno VBC reunion, M/M, Reunions, high school crush to sort-of strangers to maybe future lovers ?, including Suga's anxiety, the gang's all here, they're in a bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 00:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20367853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryankellycc/pseuds/jellyryans
Summary: Daichi had always been handsome, but no amount of Instagram stalking could’ve prepared Suga for the full force of his presence, and he was legitimately worried he wouldn’t be able to pull enough air into his lungs. He’d pass out right in the middle of the crowded bar and become an obstacle for everyone wanting a drink. They’d have to put up signs to warn the crowd of a human hurdle.(Karasuno Volleyball Club has a reunion and it's going to be both the longest and shortest night of Suga's life.)





	Drunk Off One Sip

**Author's Note:**

> Someone mentioned perhaps maybe wanting more of [this ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15746775/chapters/36742485)one shot from last year, so a year later Something happened.
> 
> Slight warnings for alcohol consumption, mentions of (public) sex, and like, maaaaybe slight homophobia or fear thereof? Better safe than sorry.
> 
> [Title.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOu3gHLEf6o)

There were only so many times a guy could button and unbutton his shirt sleeves, and Suga felt like he had at least doubled that number in the first five minutes of the car ride. He picked at the pearly plastic button holding his sleeve around his wrist and found a string peeking out from underneath the button. Suga tugged at it gently, wondering how much force it would take to yank the button clean off.

It would only take temptingly little effort, and he scolded himself immediately. He was meeting a group of people he hadn’t seen in years and the last thing he wanted was to show up without a button because he’d ripped it off on purpose. Like an animal.

  
  
Suga let out a low growl of frustration and started rolling up his sleeves. He took his time, finding comfort in the examining each crease and smoothing each fold, and then double-triple-checked that his right and left sleeves were even. He fought the thoughts as they simmered (forget the stupid buttons, forget the stupid folding), but his inner battle ended up pulling him further and further away from the shores of reason (rip off your sleeves, solve your problem) and he shook his head like that was all he needed to shake himself free. 

He had no reason to be nervous.

  
  
It was easy to lose touch with your friends from high school. Easy enough that his colleagues had been genuinely surprised that he was going to a high school volleyball reunion. They had broken out into their own school-age recollections and lamented that they hadn’t kept in touch with the people growing up around them. Such was life, they had said; you lost the people who had only been connected to you because you shared random interests and existed in accidental proximity over a given period of time.

Outwardly, he’d forced a smile. 

Inwardly, Suga had rejected every single word.

Their relationships were more than the consequence of their geography and love of volleyball. 

They were _ friends _. 

It wasn’t like they hadn’t entirely lost touch. Most of them still followed each other on social media, and Suga tried to keep up with the club, especially since Hinata’s sister had her eyes on joining. He and Asahi still lived pretty close, close enough that seeing the other wouldn’t be a burden of travel and expense. 

But when was the last time he made the effort to attend one of Karasuno’s games in person? Was leaving a snarky comment on Tsukishima’s Instagram enough to qualify as keeping in touch? Suga tried to remember the last time he and Asahi grabbed the lunch they were always promising, in Asahi’s case, and threatening, in Suga’s case.

  
  
Shame wrapped its heavy hand around Suga’s throat and made it hard for him to breathe.

They were friends but they all had made choices that meant people had faded into the background. Where did they go from there? Where _ could _ they go?

  
  
Slipping his phone out of his pocket, Suga swiped to the camera and flipped the screen.

  
  
He couldn’t see much in the dark, so he tried to catch the light each time a car passed. He checked his teeth and let his eyes wander over the familiar landscape of his face.

  
  
Suga wasn’t ashamed to admit he looked better now than he did in high school. His jaw was a little more defined, his chin a little sharper, and his cheeks were a little less round. The rest of his body wasn’t reflected in the front-facing camera, but he knew his shoulders were broader, and he liked the way his torso tapered to his waist. Small, barely noticeable things walked hand-in-hand with the things he liked about himself. They were tiny reminders him of the passage of time, like the crow’s feet that crackled in the corners of his eyes and the creases that framed his mouth, lingering even after he stopped smiling.

  
  
He was older, and so were the other members of Karasuno Volleyball Club. They were all further and further separated from the memories they shared.

  
  
Suga clutched at as many of those memories as he could and held them in a vice grip, from the ones that made him laugh aloud in the middle of his office, like the day Nishinoya had talked Tanaka into carrying him around on his shoulders to pretend to be a teacher, to the ones that made him realize he’d been staring at an empty wall for an hour while holding a cold cup of tea, like their graduation day.

  
  
He remembered the way he had sweat beneath his uniform, how his diploma crinkled beneath his fingers, and how each quiet pause in conversation felt like a chasm. 

  
He remembered Sawamura Daichi and his big brown eyes.

  
  
Suga rubbed his own eyes hard enough to see stars, like the pain would physically wipe away the feeling in his gut that made him want to throw up every time he remembered that afternoon, how he had stood in front of Daichi and waited for him to say something, or maybe it had been Daichi who had stood in front of him and waited for _him _ to say something, anything. 

However he looked at it, no matter the vantage point, he had let Daichi go.

  
  
He wasn’t sad about it anymore, but that didn’t stop him from wondering if things could’ve turned out differently. What would’ve happened if he had told Daichi about coming to terms with his sexuality? Or if he would’ve confessed to getting distracted every time Daichi got a haircut or new pair of gym shorts? What would Daichi have said if he had told him about the nights he had to slap his cheeks in order to get his homework done because he couldn’t stop thinking about how shiny Daichi’s lips looked after he took a sip of water at practice?

  
  
They were stupid kids with nothing and everything, and he couldn’t heap regret on the boy he used to be. 

He had no qualms, however, about drowning his adult self. 

  
Life was busy, but not busy enough to camouflage his cowardice. He avoided Daichi’s pictures on Instagram like the plague and ignored his tweets because every time he saw him with someone else, he hated himself for hating that they got to spend time with Daichi and he didn't.

He hated himself for feeling jealous when he had done nothing to deserve the attention.

  
  
Suga swallowed the urge to rip out his hair just as the cab pulled up to the address on the email invitation and stood on the curb as the car drove away. He adjusted his sleeves one more time, made sure both buttons were still attached, and folded and creased the sleeves again before heading up to the bar.

  
  
Hinata was the first person to accost him, pouncing as soon as Suga stepped over the threshold. Tanaka was next, grabbing his arm and pulling him towards the rest of the group. Asahi waved enthusiastically from a large, round table as they approached. Kinoshita and Nishinoya were too deep in animated conversation to notice Suga’s arrival.

  
  
Everyone was there, even Tsukishima, who glowered through thick lenses over a hilariously pink drink.

  
  
They were all so grown-up, Suga thought as he hugged them as hard as he could (but not nearly as hard as he wanted to) and, after his hugs were evenly distributed, punches were given, heads were rubbed, and Suga could finally wipe his eyes.

  
There was only one person missing.

  
  
Asahi, babying the ribs that had taken the brunt of Suga’s knuckles, pointed to the bar. “Daichi’s getting drinks,” he said with a smile so understanding Suga wanted to hit him again. “He’ll probably need some help carrying them.”

  
  
Suga thanked Asahi instead of jabbing him again, momentarily proud of his restraint, and excused himself. He squeezed his way through the crowd, in the direction Asahi had indicated, and was a full ten feet away from bar when he saw him.

  
  
Sawamura Daichi sat on a stool and watched the bartender as they added drinks to the collection of frosty glasses in front of him.

  
  
He had always been handsome, but no amount of Instagram stalking could’ve prepared Suga for the full force of Daichi’s presence, and he was legitimately worried he wouldn’t be able to pull enough air into his lungs. He’d pass out right in the middle of the crowded bar and become an obstacle for everyone wanting a drink. They’d have to put up signs to warn the crowd of the human hurdle.

  
  
He considered turning around and telling everyone something had come up, but the idea was steamrolled by the overwhelming need to say the name he hadn’t called in years. He cupped his hands around his mouth. 

  
“Daichi!”

  
  
The man spun around so fast he had to catch himself on the edge of the bar, and he stared at Suga for approximately half a second before pushing off the bar and closing the space between them.

  
  
“Suga,” he said, gawking in a way Suga would’ve poked fun at if he wasn’t reacting the same exact way.

  
  
“Been awhile, huh?”

  
  
“Yeah, it has.”

  
  
Suga noticed the tips of Daichi’s fingers twitching, like he was holding himself back. He could barely breathe, let alone think. “You gonna hug me or what?”

  
  
“Please,” Daichi said breathlessly.

  
  
Enveloped in Daichi’s arms, Suga breathed him in. Impulse control was not his strong suit, and his impulse right then, as Daichi started to pull away, was to dig his fingers into the fabric of Daichi’s should-be-too-sensible-to-be-hot sweater and cling like a cat. 

If Daichi were anything like Suga remembered, he would’ve gotten a kick out of it, but it had been too many years and too many miles and he wasn’t prepared to face the fact that Daichi would probably react the same way everyone else did when he let his guard down, with a barely-concealed grimace and cascading waves of awkward tension. 

He was not prepared for _ that _ kind of emotional fallout. He had things to do, places to be — He couldn’t afford to spend the next three days in bed wishing the night had gone literally any other way. 

It was very possible this reunion would be both the longest and shortest night of his life. 

Fulfilling his obligation to the social contract that bound them all together, he loosened his arms and tried to be proud of the way he was able not only to let go but also successfully suppress the whine that had tried with impressive perseverance to escape his throat. His sole consolation was that he got to look at Daichi again, closer this time, and he revelled in his false sense of pride right up until he realized Daichi hadn’t let go. 

And neither had he. 

Daichi’s hand rested lightly at his waist, and his hand stilled on Daichi’s arm. They stood face to face, close enough for Suga to see the small, faded acne scars on his chin under the thin layer of stubble that should not have made his heart leap into his throat. 

If he leaned forward a few inches, their lips would touch. 

It was the exact position of one too many of his teenage dreams, ones that forced him awake with a pounding heart, gripping the sheets with white knuckles as he imagined the feeling of Daichi’s lips on his own. He would bring the sheets up to cover his mouth, like his parents in the room across the hall would somehow hear him breathing and know he was awake, thinking about kissing his best friend. 

“What, no wisecrack?”

Suga felt the words in the tips of his fingers, each syllable like the shifting of tectonic plates beneath their feet, and found there were too many words and not enough. Daichi cleared his throat and spoke again, but this time he affected his voice, making it a little scratchier and adding a higher lilt to some of his vowels. 

“Geez you’d think you’d never gotten a hug before.”

“Very mature,” Suga deadpanned.

The left corner of Daichi’s lips pulled up into a playful smirk. Since when did their captain _ smirk _? Suga felt his heart start to pick up the pace again in time with the unwelcome and inappropriate thoughts that thrashed around his mind like people in a mosh pit.

“Someone had to say something, and I was used to that person being you.”

“You tryin’ to say something?”

Daichi swallowed, and Suga swore he saw his eyes flit to his lips. It made sense, with their faces still close enough to feel each puff of breath, that Daichi’s eyes had to go somewhere and his options were limited but he filed the image away anyway, already looking forward to examining it more closely in the privacy of his bedroom. 

The bartender called for them, saving him from whatever response he might’ve had, and his hand fell from Suga’s waist as he turned to acknowledge the drink order. The bar was six steps away but he might as well have hopped a plane and flown to Europe. 

Suddenly, there were people on every side of him, pouring into the space that he vacated. He had been surrounded by people who were not Daichi for so many years, and it had been _ fine _ but now that he remembered what it was like to have him so close, the space around him felt like a vacuum. 

Could anything exist in a vacuum? 

It was a terrifying thought, one that was best left buried under ten feet of concrete, never to see the light of day again. Daichi had one elbow on the bar behind a daunting pile of sweaty glasses but was still facing him. He looked worried, and Suga gathered what he could of his social fortitude. He had come to help with the drinks, not stand in the middle of the bar like an idiot. 

Daichi eyed him as he approached, so he smiled sweetly in the hope that it would distract him from the cracks in his composure.

“Are you alright?” Daichi asked, completely unaffected the attempt to throw him off. 

Suga channelled his frustration into a fist and punched Daichi’s shoulder.

“That’s not an answer,” Daichi said. 

There were so many things that hadn’t changed, Suga wanted to say. Instead, he shrugged. “Violence transcends time and language.”

Daichi snorted loudly. The sound was uncontrolled and ugly, and it charged his soul like a battery. “You’re a hard guy to argue with,” Suga said with a soft chuckle. “How could I have forgotten.”

Life wasn’t fair. He _ knew _ it wasn’t, and it was just proven by the way Daichi’s eyelashes fluttered as his eyes roamed over his face. It wasn’t fair that he would walk out later that evening and they would go back to being whatever people they had become, separate from the other.

Knowing that life wasn’t fair didn’t stop his heart from plummeting into his gut and trying to pump blood when there was nothing but bile. 

“I feel like I should be offended,” he said evenly, maintaining eye contact even though each second hurt worse than the last. 

“It’s not a bad thing,” Daichi said. “I missed it.”

Suga swallowed but his throat was dry, and he coughed into his hand. “There are plenty of people in the world to argue with, just spend ten minutes on Twitter with any sort of opinion,” he rasped. 

He raised his eyes to find Daichi holding out a glass of water, expression open and hopeful like he was offering alms to a lost god. He tried to take the glass with the same amount of reverence and smiled over the rim. A bead of sweat broke on Daichi’s temple. 

“Any opinion?”

“Literally any,” Suga said, taking a big gulp of ice water. Some of it dribbled out the side of his mouth. He didn’t care. 

“Like, ‘I love dogs’?” 

“Do you have a dog?”

“No?” Daichi said. “But I don’t see how someone could argue with me about that.”

“Best case scenario, you’ll get people who’ll bitch at you for not liking cats.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“People don’t make sense.”

“Then what’s the worst case scenario?”

“Use your imagination.”

Daichi succumbed to a full-body shudder. “Did you really have to go there?”

“You were the one who was mocking me for not saying anything.”

“And now I’m starting to regret it."

It was easy, talking like they were walking to their classrooms or rolling up the volleyball net after practice. It shouldn’t have been, not with the way Suga had to make a conscious effort to avert his eyes from the outline of Daichi’s pecs in that damned sweater or the way he had to hide his hands when they started to shake, but Daichi made it easy. 

And their easy conversation shouldn’t have made his eyes burn, or forced him to remember feeling like long as they had each other they could do anything, or the way he had once confused _ easy _with _ forever. _

If Daichi noticed the flush rising in his cheeks, he didn’t acknowledge it as he turned to the drinks on the bar. Water had pooled at the bottom of the glasses, and Suga grabbed as many as he could. The cold made him flinch. “We should probably get out of here before the bartender throws them at us.”

Daichi gathered the rest of their drinks in his unfairly big hands. “Nah, he wouldn’t do that. He’s been really understanding so far, you know, with our group. He even helped me bring the first round over because everyone else was either climbing a wall or screaming.” He jutted his chin out in the direction of the bartender and, when the bartender noticed, he thanked him with the sort of sincerity that had made Suga question his sexuality for the first time all those years ago. 

The bartender had the nerve to wink at Daichi, who in turn had the nerve to blush. Suga wondered how close he could get to the bartender with a smashed glass before he was forcibly ejected from the bar. 

He was weighing the pros and cons of ending his night early, and possibly in a jail cell, when Daichi cleared his throat and motioned in the direction of their group. “Ready?” 

“More than ready,” he grumbled. 

Daichi arched an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as he turned. He looked over his shoulder three times on the way back to the table, and Suga wondered that he might’ve thought he wouldn’t follow. 

When they made it back, Asahi grabbed glasses from Daichi and Shimizu took some of Suga’s, setting them up around the table. Suga was about to regret not having snuck his own order in when Daichi handed him another drink. “Asahi told me to order you a vodka soda?”

Something about Daichi’s uncertainty made Suga leap at the drink with more enthusiasm than a crappy well cocktail deserved. He snatched it out of Daichi’s hands and took a sip. The burst of cheap alcohol felt good going down. “Thanks,” he said quickly. He chewed on the straw for a moment and hated himself for his inability to leave well enough alone. “What would’ve happened if I didn’t show?”

“In the scheme of things, ordering you a drink didn’t seem like that big of a risk. The worst that would’ve happened was someone would’ve gotten an extra drink.”

Heat flared up in the back of Suga’s throat, and he couldn’t blame it on the alcohol. They weren’t that far from the nearest exit — he could throw his drink in the air as a distraction and split. It would be a dramatic exit, one that people would talk about enough that details would go missing every time the story was retold, and soon no one would remember who’d been there in the first place.

“Plus,” Daichi said, interrupting Suga’s exit plan considerations, “you said you’d be here.”

“I did, didn’t I,” Suga mumbled thoughtfully into his drink. 

“Didn’t you want to?”

Daichi was suddenly very interested in peeling at the corner of the label on his beer bottle, looking up when they heard Hinata scream Suga’s name from somewhere on the dance floor, followed by a chorus of cheers that sounded like thirty people but was probably only Tanaka and Nishinoya. 

“My adoring fans await,” Suga said, hoping that his words would serve as both answer and explanation. He put his drink on the table and waded through the crowd, happy to escape the image of Daichi picking at his beer bottle with bitten-down nails and inexplicably sad that he didn’t get the chance to memorize the way his mouth pulled when he was thinking. 

He inserted himself into the part of their group that had made it to the dance floor, surprised that Kageyama was right in the middle and that he was talking easily to Narita, who had made it to the dance floor, both swaying in time with the music. Nishinoya grabbed his shoulder and Suga leaned into the touch. Nishinoya had always been tactile, and Suga had never admitted out loud how much he had depended on that grounding presence.

Tanaka laughed at something Ennoshita said and elbowed Narita in the gut, and, with Nishinoya’s touch lingering on his shoulder, Suga let loose in pulsing beat of the music. 

The sensory overload was almost enough of a distraction. 

_ Almost. _

Suga glanced back at the table and swallowed the initial disappointment of not catching Daichi’s eye. Instead of looking at the dance floor, he leaned back into the booth with his arm casually on the back of the seat while he talked to Asahi. 

Suga cursed the very specific genes that made Asahi’s biceps bulge under his shirt sleeves and made him look like a yakuza leader dressed by his doting mother and continued to cast furtive glance in their direction until Daichi threw his head back to laugh. Suga followed the column of Daichi’s neck and watched the bob of his Adam’s apple. 

He shouldn’t have been surprised by the handful of girls that approached the table; if Daichi’s uninhibited laugh had made his entire body burn, who was to say that the entire establishment hadn’t felt the call? Suga watched until the girls blocked his view entirely and finally turned away when there was no way of placing himself so that he could see Daichi between them. 

The only benefit of having brought his attention back to the group was that Kiyoko and Yachi had joined them. 

They danced just beyond their circle, bobbing together and holding hands like the rest of the world could fall away and they’d be fine, like they had all they could ever need. Suga couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“Cute, right?” Hinata screeched into Suga’s ear. “Can you believe it took me, like, three weeks to talk Yachi into coming? She was afraid Shimizu-san wouldn’t remember her!”

Suga jerked his head in the surprise. They looked like they had been together for ages, like they _ fit _. “What?”

“Yeah!” Hinata shouted over the music. 

“They didn’t talk after we graduated?”

Hinata bounced on the balls of his feet. “Not really? I never asked but they never, like, hung out.”

“Oh,” Suga said dumbly. 

“But I mean, life gets super crazy, right? Just ‘cause you don’t talk to someone doesn’t mean you’re like, POOF! Not friends! I feel like Kageyama and I didn’t talk for two whole years.”

Kageyama looked over when Hinata said his name, and Suga wondered if there was actual merit to his theory that Kageyama was especially in tune with some part of Hinata’s voice. It should’ve been impossible for him to hear them over the booming bass and other shouted conversations, yet he was pulling his mouth to the side in a silent question. 

“I said you’re stupid, Yama-kun!”

“Not as stupid as you!” Kageyama answered automatically. 

Hinata laughed loudly, and Suga caught the smile that lingered on Kageyama’s face before falling back into the stunted but comfortable conversation he seemed to be having with Ennoshita. “But we’re all here, right? That’s certainly something!”

Suga didn’t get to respond when a new song burst through the speakers and suddenly they were drowning in shouts and screams, both from their little group and the crowd as a whole, and Suga dove straight into the overwhelming noise. 

The blinders of the new wave of excitement were so efficient that he hadn’t noticed someone sidling up next to him until there was a tap on his shoulder. He didn’t let his expression falter when the person didn’t have Daichi’s face, and he was very nearly satisfied with the way their eyes lit up when he shimmied against them. 

He was mostly impressed by the way he only looked over at Daichi one more time and almost contented by the way his new dance partner fit right into the group as they bumped and moved and jumped and threw their arms up in the air with a collective lack of grace.

By the time he realized he had to use the restroom, he had nearly forgotten that he had been nervous, or that he didn’t know how to hold the crumbling pieces of this dignity after having been rightfully ignored all night, or that all he wanted was to tell Daichi that every time he had walked him home after school he’d wished that every single person on his street would go out of town so that they could be alone.

He’d almost forgotten that they didn’t actually know each other anymore, that Daichi owed him nothing, and that this reunion was simply a chance for the team to be reunited for a night of fun before returning to their lives. 

In the restroom, Suga buttoned and unbuttoned his shirt sleeves until the little plastic button that had been hanging on by a thread popped off entirely. It hit the ground with a light tap, and then another, and rolled into the space between two broken tiles and disappeared. 

He had one sip of his cocktail, afraid that he would get drunk off one sip and forget what it felt like to adore his former captain, but, as he smoothed a piece of hair behind his ear, he decided a full drink (or five) would be a very welcome addition to the evening. If he could find his dance partner, maybe he would even leave with a phone number and have another face to superimpose on the one he couldn’t let go, even after all these years. 

Suga ripped open the door with renewed vigor and ran straight into a firm, flat chest. 

“Asshole,” He hissed automatically. He was fully prepared to level the human wall with a glare that they’d never forget, right up until he saw who it was.

Daichi winced. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be able to hear when you were coming out.”

“No it’s.. It’s fine, I should be the one apologizing. I’m the one who just called a stranger an asshole.”

“Yeah,” Daichi said halfheartedly. He looked into the bathroom over Suga’s shoulder as the door shut.

“Looking for ghosts?” Suga joked, painfully aware of the hysteria that had him vibrating in place. “Is the bathroom here haunted? It’s the cracked mirror, isn’t it?” Daichi laughed, a short huff that could’ve also been a breath, and his heart squeezed without his consent. “Sorry, you probably need to get in there. Don’t stare at the mirror for too long!”

He tried to slip away, but a hand on his wrist stopped him. Someone else pushed past him and into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind them, and it occurred to him that if Daichi had needed to use the bathroom, he wouldn’t still be standing there. 

“Did something happen? Did someone start a fight or-”

“Suga, no, nothing happened. I was waiting for you.”

“What? Why?”

“Er.” Daichi rubbed his face with his free hand. “Now that I’m thinking it through, you might’ve been right about me being an asshole. It’s just, you were dancing with someone, and the next thing I knew you had both disappeared, so I got Asahi to watch the door and Tsukishima to watch the bar while I went to look for you.”

Suga pretended that he wasn’t the focus of Daichi’s undivided attention so that he could form words. “You know you picked the two worst people to help.”

“I’m realizing that now,” Daichi said grimly. 

“Could you imagine Asahi trying to stop a stranger at the door? And you _ know _ Tsukishima wouldn’t say anything even if the bar burned down.” Suga started to laugh. Or was it the cackling of a cartoon witch? He didn’t recognize his own voice. 

“Yes, thank you for that, but they were the closest and I wasn’t really thinking.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was worried.”

The laughter died in Suga’s throat. He was in serious danger of being fully present for this unbelievable conversation. “Worried?”

“Suga, you disappeared with a stranger!”

“I didn’t disappear,” Suga said warily. “I told everyone on the dance floor I was going.”

“Okay, but I looked away for like a minute when I looked back, you were gone. And so was the person you were dancing with.”

Suga threw his hands up in the air. “I know we haven’t spoken in a while but I still don’t need an audience to, oh,” he stopped. “Did you think I was going to the bathroom _ with _ them?” 

“I don’t know,” Daichi said, his voice raised. “I panicked?”

Suga pulled his wrist out of Daichi’s grip and crossed his arms over his chest. He grabbed his elbow with one arm and rubbed his face with the other before taking a deep breath. If he was going to lean into this emotional breakdown, it wasn’t going to happen in front of a door to a public restroom. “Well, it’s all fine. I’m fine, that person is probably ten blocks away and just fine, you’re fine, now let’s go back to the bar so that I can order five of those awful-looking blue shots and have fun before we all go our separate ways again.”

He put his arms on Daichi’s shoulders with the intention of physically steering him back to the bar and then escaping out the emergency exit like he had planned earlier, but Daichi’s feet stayed firmly planted on the sticky linoleum floor. 

And when Daichi stayed, so did Suga. 

People had always assumed that because he had the bigger mouth, he had been the one that people listened to, the one to whom the team turned and knitted everyone together. Only the other teams, the ones that analyzed their dynamic with eyes like hawks, knew that it was all Daichi. If Daichi was their anchor, Suga was the storm, all thrashing waves and gales and streaks of lightning. People experienced the full force of the storm and forgot to think about what kept the ship in place.

Suga was a live wire, his nerves frayed and sparking with each beat of the awful music the DJ was inflicting on them. 

“Is that what you want?” Daichi asked.

“Yes,” Suga spit. “Though now I’m thinking at least seven shots.”

Daichi shook his head with with own hiss of frustration. “No, I meant do you want us_ all _ to go our separate ways?”

The toilet flushed behind the door and Suga’s shaky self-control snapped like a twig.

“No, I don’t. I miss you so much it hurts sometimes, but that’s just the way it goes! We’ve all got lives apart from each other and live in different places and work different jobs and have different friends. We’ll have these great memories from the past and add a few every so often at these reunions or running into each other randomly on the street or accidentally texting each other or liking a picture on instagram or whatever! It’s all great and normal and eventually you’ll forget me entirely and I can finally, maybe start to get over the fact that my stupid high school crush was just a stupid high school crush and accept the fact that I’m a grown-ass adult and should be way the hell over it!”

Suga’s hands dropped like lead weights, and he panted as he caught his breath. The unfortunate side effect of letting go was that he was now free to replay his embarrassing rant in excruciating detail in his head for the rest of eternity. “Fuck,” he whispered.

“You had a crush on me,” Daichi said. It was more of a statement than a question. 

“Fuck!” Suga repeated, a little louder this time. “Yes, Daichi, I had a giant crush on you,” he said. He wondered how long his legs would hold before his knees buckled and he passed out right on the disgusting floor. Instead of being a hurdle to the bar he would be a landmark for the bathroom. When people asked where it was, the staff could point and say, oh, you have to walk over the person lying in the fetal position. And because he had never known when to quit, he added, “and apparently I never really got over it.”

He had been staring firmly at the floor, but, in the interest of proving he was the grown-ass adult he claimed to be, raised his chin. It might’ve been his biggest mistake of the evening; Daichi looked like he’d swallowed something rotten. 

“I missed you,” Daichi said. 

Any hopes he might’ve entertained evaporated, and Suga made a noise that was meant to be human but sounded more like the croak of a strangled frog. “I missed you too, buddy,” he said, not a little unkindly.

“No, that’s not...” Daichi bit his lip. “I _ miss _you, Suga. Still. All the time.” 

He managed to find the eye in the tornado of every single emotion he was trying desperately not to show. “Could’ve fooled me,” Suga huffed.

“Yeah, well,” Daichi began to say, then stopped to rub his face again. “Honestly? When we were talking you looked like you’d rather be literally anywhere else, then you left, and when that guy came up to you and the two of you started dancing… It looked like the first time you were having fun all night. What was I supposed to think?”

Suga ignored both the question and the uncomfortable prickling under his skin that happened right before he had to admit that someone else might be right, as well as the hope that was slowly crawling its way out of the pit where Suga had locked it away. “It didn’t seem like you were paying that much attention to me.” 

Daichi had the nerve to scoff. “When you’re in a room, it’s physically impossible for me _ not _ to pay attention to you.”

“But I kept looking over at you!” 

“You did?”

“Yes!” Suga exclaimed. “I’m going to have to do at least fifty extra hours yoga this week to get rid of the neck cramp!”

“Fifty?” Daichi said incredulously. 

“_At least _ fifty,” Suga corrected. He knew he was smiling, the kind of toothy grin that belonged on a cartoon character, and it took over his face as thousands of questions pushed and shoved each other on the tip of his tongue. How long had Daichi missed him? Had he been waiting for a sign? Was there a reason he didn’t? Did Daichi want to kiss him as much as he wanted to kiss Daichi? Had he been nervous for tonight?

The question that finally made it out of his mouth, however, was, “Did you really think that I was going to fuck some stranger in a gross bathroom?”

“I don’t know,” Daichi sputtered. His face turned a nice shade of red. “It would’ve been okay if you did, I mean, I wouldn’t have been okay, but I needed to make sure you were okay with it… if that’s what you were doing. In the gross bathroom.” 

“When you say you wouldn’t have been okay…”

“I would’ve been really jealous,” Daichi said unhappily. “Like, I might’ve had to go outside and punch a wall. After making sure that I shouldn’t punch that guy for you.”

“Sawamura Daichi, defending my honor,” he mused. He wanted to pluck their conversation out of time and feel the weight of it in his hands. 

Another bar patron elbowed their way past them to get to the bathroom. If he _ had _been holding the moment, it would’ve shattered into a thousand pieces. “As much as I love what’s happening here,” Suga continued, “Maybe we can take this away from the bathroom door?”

“Where did you have in mind?”

Suga looked over Daichi’s shoulder and caught a flash of red hair. “Do you dance?”

“If it’s with you.”

Suga held out his hand and Daichi took it. Fingers intertwined, they made their way back to the dance floor where the rest of the team gathered. He rubbed his thumb against Daichi’s skin as Nishinoya, Hinata, and Tanaka welcomed them and held on as Daichi used his free hand to clap Asahi on the back. 

He held on as he asked Daichi why he hadn’t liked his Instagram posts or texted and held on as Daichi asked him the same thing. He only let go when Daichi’s other hand settled on the small of his back, but even that had been a struggle. 

“Can I make these years up to you?”

“I’m not having sex with you in a gross bathroom,” Suga deadpanned.

Daichi threw his head back to laugh and Suga took the opportunity to hide his face in the crook of his neck. As his nose grazed the edge where sweater met skin, he wondered if he _could _ stop smiling. 

If he couldn’t, if his preternaturally gleeful expression was permanently plastered on his face, he might be forced to join the circus and with a bunch of curious and interesting people under the spokes of a bright red and white tent. People would buy tickets and come from all over the world to see the man-who-couldn’t-stop-smiling. They’d point at him and say it was weird, that they couldn’t believe he smiled even when he was eating, or talking, or sleeping. They’d say that it was impossible for one person to be so wholly, blissfully, idiotically happy. 

When the people’s taunting got to be too much, Daichi could punch them. 

(After he got a solid hit of his own, of course.) 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I appreciate you the most.


End file.
